On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 11:42:48 -0500, Jim wrote:

http://www.thedailybrew.com/

extract

It is 1969. You are a 21 year old kid in the Navy, serving on a Swift
boat in Vietnam. You might have joined the National Guard, but some
Congressman’s kid jumped ahead of you in line, grabbing the last spot
available.

Right now you are on patrol in the Mekong Delta, and you have run into
an ambush. A mine goes off under your boat, throwing you in the water
and injuring your skipper. Weighed down by guns, grenades, and
ammunition, you sink to the bottom while five more boats pass overhead.
You shed your gear and surface. As the boats disappear down the river,
you are taking machine gun and small arms fire from both banks of the
river. You can’t swim to either side without getting shot, and even if
you did, getting captured means getting killed. You have one, and only
one chance, to get out alive. You have to hope that your skipper turns
his boat around, heads back into the crossfire over the mine infested
water, reaches down with his bloody arm, and drags you back up on the boat.

Now for the quiz.

Who would you rather have as your skipper, George Bush or John Kerry?

Jim Rassmann is alive and well living on the Oregon coast because when
it happened to him, his skipper was John Kerry. I don’t know what George
Bush would have done if he had been skipper that day, but I do know that
on September 11 when he was commander in chief and this nation was under
attack, he was nowhere to be found. He was busy flying around the
country, eventually landing his plane in Nebraska. It was Rudy Giuliani,
not George Bush who stepped in front of the cameras in New York City and
let America know that while we were down, we weren’t out, and no made
for T.V. fictional account of history changes that fact.

Once Kerry realized he had a sailor in the water, alive, he had no
choice but to turn around or be called a coward the rest of his life.
What would you have done?

I can't imagine *anyone* who would have run under the circumstances.

John H

On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale, MD
on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!